Page 121 of Road Queens
“Good practice. How’s your talk coming?”
“That’s right; that’s coming up next month, isn’t it?” Sean asked. “Are you nervous?”
“Mmm.” She took another bite, chewed, swallowed, answered. “Haven’t given a speech since Speech in seventh grade.”
“I remember,” Amanda replied. “‘How to Traumatize Your Children.’”
Cass laughed. “You remember the title?”
“How could I forget? How could anyone?”
“Anyway. I’m nervous, but it’s not the speech, or the people. I’ve talked to lots of ...” Cass looked around, saw Sidney was on the other side of the store, and lowered her voice. “I’ve talked to lots of individuals with justice-system involvement—”
“This is a euphemism-free zone!” Amanda hissed. “Are youtryingto get us all killed?”
“—when I visited Mom. They’re mostly regular folks who had bad luck and followed up with bad choices.” When Sean opened his mouth, she cut him off. “Please let me stay in that idealized bubble. Obviously, some very terrible people are also locked up.”
Amanda knew all about the bubble. Though her feelings about her murderous mother were conflicted, Cassandra didn’t want her to get hurt or worse. So at first, she was nervous about visiting the prison facility, which was why she and Sidney had accompanied her the first time, and several times after. To see Cass chatting up other inmates and befriending guards was to see her relief that, like so many things, prison wasn’t like in the movies.
It helped that Iris Rivers had valuable skills, not least her background as a physician assistant. In exchange for a lack of hassle, Iris offered free medical advice. She’d also noticed when one of the guards was in the first phase of a heart attack. (“No, it isnotnormal when your left arm suddenly hurts like hell and you can’t get your breath, now sit down.”) And she saved the life of an inmate who tried to kill herself by jamming a sharpened toothbrush handle into her own throat. Amanda had been saddened but not surprised to read that the number one cause of death in prisons was suicide, a terrible tidbit she had not shared with Cassandra.
“Anyway, my point,” Cassandra was saying, “I just don’t want to embarrass Mom, y’know?”
MCF-Stillwater occasionally invited professionals to give inspirational talks to the residents, and Iris Rivers had suggested her daughter. When the invitation came, Cassandra had assumed it was a joke until a phone call disabused her.
“How would you even embarrass a murderer?” Amanda wondered. “Especially that one. Make fun of her hair?”
“I’m sure I’ll find a way,” Cass replied drily. “Drop a few f-bombs, maybe start a riot, instigate a cafeteria sit-down, steal all the toilet paper, whatever.”
“Well, I look forward to it.”
“I wish you were kidding.”
“Except, you know I’m not. It’s almost ten, I’m going to close. You want to come up for the drinking game?”
“Hell-o!” Sidney, freed from keeping books away from the child who was more lollipop than girl, bustled up front. “Drinking game? Here I thought it was gonna get dull.”
“Cass is going to practice her speech at us—”
“‘At’? That’s an odd way to put it.”
“Shush, Cass. She’s going to practice, and we’re going to drink every time she uses an unnecessary adverb—and most of them are. Also any run-on sentences or plosives.”
“Plo—wait.” Sidney started to reach for her phone, then realized it was easier to ask. “Isn’t a plosive just a word that starts withport?”
“Uh-huh. Andk.”
“But how the hell is she—”
“That’s Cassandra’s problem,” Sean deadpanned. “Ours is keeping the Brandy Alexanders flowing like wine.”
“Oh, fuck me sideways, you and your ice cream obsession.”
“An improvement over my OpStar obsession, don’t you think, Sidney?” he teased.
“Barely,” Sidney sniffed, but Amanda wasn’t fooled. Sean was growing on her like a benign fungus.
Cass was scrolling through the Notes app on her phone, skimming her speech as she frowned and fretted. “I don’t see how I can take out all the plosives. What a ridiculous rule.”
